


Greensward

by paperiuni



Series: Shades of Red and Green [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Outdoor Sex, Porn with Feelings, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 03:22:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5896186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian knows what he wants, but sometimes the smallest things can spur a change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Greensward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [electricshoebox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricshoebox/gifts).



> For Riss because Riss is a dear and deserves good things, so here's a dash of smut with feelings.
> 
> This follows _[Heartwood](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5867410)_ , by which I mean "Read that first if you'd like context for your porn". ♥

Dorian takes the steps of the central watchtower down two at a time for the plain delight of limbering his legs. The outpost lies in humid afternoon shade, canopied by the immense oaks in their rich, sun-speckled greens.

The clang of the weaponsmith's hammer leads him to the forge, which is set up in a tent at the base of the tower. Things still look for their final places at the outpost, but the smithy is an essential.

Outside the tent, Bull is talking to a smith. He holds out one of his pair of hefty Fereldan dirks; the other, Dorian recalls, was lost during a recent trek across the woods. He does fancy that he's found most of the _concealed_ weaponry Bull wears on the average day.

"How long will you stay?" The smith turns the dirk in her hands. "I have a heap of billets that need turning into blades first. Our patrols need to match all that wildlife, on four feet or two."

"Depends on the boss--the lady Inquisitor--but I'd guess a few more days."

"I'll see what I can do." She takes brisk possession of the dirk and turns back to her apprentice. Dorian nabs the opening.

"A few more days, is it?" He dashes his voice with lament. "I might as well take up hermitry in the forest, then, since we're never to see a city street again."

"You think there are any city streets worth the name south of Val Royeaux?" Veering away from the tent, Bull strides up to meet him. A departing patrol creates a hubbub by the gate, but otherwise the narrow courtyard is calm.

"Now that you mention it." Dorian laughs a little.

"Thought so." Warmth glimmers in Bull's eye. "Ah, and--good to see you back on your feet."

Dorian couldn't agree more. The open air of the Emerald Graves is a vast improvement over dozing the days away in a tiny bedroom--he no doubt ousted some officer to the barracks downstairs--for all that he yearns for more civilised climes.

That is not, in verity, the only thing he misses.

"I thought I might impose on you a moment." 

"I've got time." Bull sets his longer step to Dorian's pace.

"Perhaps even go so far as to leave the walls?" The afternoon lull notwithstanding, privacy is hard to come by within the palisade: people or materials occupy every corner. "If the gossip at supper is to be believed, all roaming dangers have been vanquished within the mile."

"What kind of imposition is this, exactly?" Bull's timbre changes. Dorian feels it like a finger sliding down the back of his neck.

Contrary to his first impulse, he waits, lets the quality of the pause speak for him. It saves him from formulating, too.

Bull has the courtesy to lean in only a pinch deeper than normal. "Outdoors? That works great for me, if you don't mind the twigs and leaves."

"Acorns," Dorian adds. "Sand, insects, possible rashvine. Perhaps a stray demon popping by."

All of them make for easier answers than the truth. _You are a spy_ , he wants to sigh, _Take the hint._ As if Dorian had anything so concrete as a truth--only a liminal, numinous notion. The touch of hands on his cheeks, drawing him from sleep. Bull, kneeling silent before him at his request.

"I'll get my axe." Bull's grin is crooked, but merry.

Dorian bites back his smile, for fear that it'd be too little whim and too much relief. "Good."

The outpost falls out of sight into the shimmering shadows of the forest floor. At a backward glance, the clearing the Inquisition has carved out for it looks vanishingly small between the trees.

Dorian no longer steps on every slippery root or rustles through every thicket of nettles--the weeks out here have been full of little lessons. By unspoken agreement, they follow a mossy rill that slips down to the bigger stream. Once they're beyond the sight of the lookouts, a tension sloughs from Dorian; the constant prickle of being watched shrinks away.

And, Andraste's pyre, what is he doing? It wouldn't be the first time they've left camp on a supposed evening stroll, the excuse transparent to all in their close company.

This feels more deliberate. Bull walks a step behind him, and Dorian can't shake the more pleasant sense of his presence. Reason tells him that Bull lets his eye roam, in case of unlikely trouble. Fancy, on the other hand, wants to insist on Bull watching him.

They descend the side of a hillock, overtaken by the branching roots of a giant oak. The rill falls over a low grassy ledge in a fine spray, merging into a series of rushing rapids in the stream. With his hands leaned on a gnarled, massive root, Dorian scours the patch of deep summer grass with a critical eye.

"Checking for nettles?" Bull hops over the hip-height root, landing on his good leg.

"It was _one time_." Dorian can't reach a peevish tone, not when Bull turns to him over the curve of the root, eye cinched with easy humour. It'll do, with Bull looking at him like that.

_I don't care. Kiss me._

His good sense should have a few scathing words with his ludicrous desires. His hand is mended--the bones knit by a mage healer--and his bruises are fading, and he has no excuse for being less than clear-headed.

His mind is clear, clear and bright as cut glass.

"Could we not dwell on my utter lack of interest in the wilderness?" He reaches forward, but Bull meets him halfway. "I'd rather--mmh."

"Sure thing," Bull says, into the kiss, and when Dorian drapes his arms around Bull's neck, Bull grips him under the thighs and hoists him over the root. Scrambling for balance a moment, Dorian doesn't let it thwart him. Bull's mouth is warm and scraped with laughter. Dorian kisses him again, with teeth, with intent, as if he has a point to make.

A hitch in Bull's breathing jolts through Dorian, a twinge of victory. He ducks lower to suck at an earlobe, to bite at the side of Bull's neck so that the gasp swells into a curse. Both of Bull's hands are occupied holding him up; one wide, strong palm settles under his arse and tugs him in. Dorian inhales hard at the warm drag of his cock against the stirring shape of Bull's.

Oh, oh yes.

He lets Bull repeat the motion, all lazy friction through layers of fabric, while his fingers hook into the buckle of Bull's harness. Neither of them is in armour, Dorian in his light half-cloak, but the clothes are starting to feel like an affront and not only in the sense of Bull's colour choices.

"You're in a rush," Bull says, and bumps Dorian's cheek with his nose. Dorian leans up into the kiss: a wet, whispering thing with the angle and the way his breath runs shallow.

"Is that a problem?"

"Nah." Pulling him up and in, Bull takes his mouth properly, with heady focus that leaves Dorian gasping against his mouth. His ankles wrap around Bull's thighs, the strain of holding himself up bleeding into a wild, wanting shiver in his spine.

When the kiss ebbs out, Bull sets him down on his feet. Dorian fumbles for footholds, scoffing ironic amusement at his own clumsiness. Bull lifts the strap of his staff off over his head and arm, and despite the charge dancing between them, lays both their weapons within reach.

Any danger feels like a marginal notion. The light falls full and green; the rapids cover the sounds of their movement from most prying ears. The encircling roots leave a hollow of thick grass and leaf between them and the stream bank. If one were in a sentimental mood, it'd make for a rather ideal hideaway.

Dorian would more closely describe his mood as ruled by lust, so there is that.

"Can I--" Dorian nearly laughs at Bull's questioning tug at his cloak. The wool cloth is soaked with weeks of travel, but it seems some points Dorian made about minding his attire have sunk in.

He shrugs the cloak off and tosses it onto the grass. "Yes. Preferably followed by the rest of our clothes."

"So, in a rush, but not such a rush that you couldn't get naked."

The grass swishes against his bare feet. Dorian spares the time to bundle the rest of his clothes so they might not stain, but there lies the limit of his care. When Bull turns back to him, Dorian feels his concentration narrow like the sinuous snag of the Fade when he's casting.

There's Bull, strong shoulders dappled with the sun, his hand curving to Dorian's hip so his thumb rests in line with his cock, a teasing half-inch to the right.

Dorian breathes, nostrils wide, mouth unaccountably dry. "Are you waiting for my leave?"

A foolish question, but Bull's answer is gentle. "Always."

"Dear Andraste and all her excessive Anointed," Dorian mutters. "Please, feel free to suck my cock."

Bull's laughter rolls in a low rumble. "In good time." He nudges Dorian back, then down, onto the spread cloak and the sun-warmed grass. The rill tumbling by fills the air with a clean, earthy smell, living green and running water.

Dorian strives for a quizzical facade as Bull lowers himself between his bent knees. Some quip about wasting time rises onto his tongue, with the way they seem to move in stops and starts.

"That what you want?" Bull strokes his palms up Dorian's calves, callused fingertips on the scar he earned on the side of his knee last month. Such lives they lead these days. Dorian's never been hurt so often before, and yet his skin is far cry from Bull's tapestry of old wounds. "My mouth on your pretty cock? Dragged me all the way out here for that, too. I could've just sucked you off behind the kitchen."

"Well, yes." Dorian sighs, raised halfway up on his arms. "That isn't--"

"Not the same." Bull sounds nearly contemplative. "You'd have to keep quiet, then." His thumb slides across the patch of skin under Dorian's kneecap. An absurd tremor runs up to his groin, his cock twitching and filling.

"Such insufferable demands, indeed," Dorian manages. "If you are set on making me wait..."

Bull keeps up the stroke, indolent as the haze in the air. "Never longer than you can take."

"Bull," Dorian says, low, and finds he has no follow-up.

A gritty laugh, from deep in Bull's throat. It makes Dorian's heart beat faster, something there that he cannot reach--and Bull's hands move up his thighs to push them apart.

Caught between relief and frustration, the moment here and the meaning that eludes him, Dorian begins to sag onto his back. Then Bull licks a slow trace up the inside of his leg; he feels the prickle of stubble on his cock as it nudges against Bull's cheek. Bull exhales long, lets the shaft slide against the corner of his mouth from base to crown. His eye flickers shut.

Dorian understands, with dreamy distance, that he can't quite look away. Bull's breath shivers against his skin. Dorian's fingers slot into a familiar spot under his horn, the skin soft where it seams over into bone.

"Please." Dorian barely hears his own voice. The leaf shadow sways over both their skin.

"Yeah?" And Bull, being who he is, what he is--sent to test Dorian by some absent, warped divinity--waits for Dorian to continue.

 _Get on with it, you wicked bastard._ Or, _Stop teasing._ Or, softer, _Come here._ Or, or, or.

A press of his hand would put Bull's mouth where he wanted it. Where he still wants it.

"Let me up," he whispers, throat parched, heart a restless tattoo just beneath. "I want--I need--oh, everything, you where I can--"

Bull's mouth twists, a burst of breath slipping free. Dorian feels as if he'd dropped the moment like a glass ball, and it were falling glittering through his fingers.

 _May we pretend_ , he wonders, _that I have not changed anything?_

Then Bull reaches up to wrap an arm around his waist. Reacting before his conscious thoughts quite follow up, Dorian yields, to be swept up astride Bull's legs. His toes find points of balance in the grass, and he steadies himself with a hand on Bull's sternum.

"Right." Bull's voice hums with a crackle of contained emotion. "I've got you. Finish the sentence."

Some part of Dorian wants to laugh. It'd be a pitiful sound, in all likelihood. Here he is, in some forsaken backwood in Orlais, straddled across the lap of a man whose patience he's done little to deserve, foundering with a simple truth.

"I need to see you." Dorian sweeps an arm around Bull's neck for a light grip there, on the back of his shoulders. "Your face. I do beg your pardon, I--this is--"

"Dorian," Bull says, with utter gravity, "you finish _that_ sentence and I'm taking my axe and walking out of here."

"Oh," Dorian says, choked, "oh," and there is no recourse left to him but to kiss Bull.

It is a tender kiss, but not unsure: he slants his mouth to Bull's as if it fit at last, after a hundred kisses from the urgent to the absentminded. Bull lets him set the pace, tilting to the touch, his mouth soft and certain.

The curve of Bull's hands along Dorian's back to his hips is a deep, soothing glide, but when the right one moves down the juncture of his hip and leg, Dorian breaks from the kiss. "Before you ask, yes. Yes--oh, please."

Bull closes his fingers around both their cocks, Dorian straining forward to ease the contact. Want crashes to the fore, lights in his veins, pushes through the tarry weight of his hesitations. Bull's thumb drifts up to tease the crown of Dorian's cock, while his grip keeps the shaft pressed into the hot weight of Bull's own.

One hand on Bull's shoulder for support, Dorian drags the other a snaking path under his jaw, over the tender hollow on the side of his throat, across skin just to feel it give to his fingers. Sweat threads traces along Bull's neck. Dorian licks one away, tastes salt and a hint of leather, and bites into the flesh under Bull's ear.

"Ahh." Bull is rarely vocal, except in praise or tease; Dorian's more used to his own voice being their chief accompaniment. "Ah, shit."

Bull's hand squeezes around them both. The muscles of his legs tighten beneath Dorian, another cue to his shortening control. Bracing himself against Bull, Dorian surrenders the rhythm to him, the warm, rough slide of their cocks together.

Under Dorian's searching fingers, Bull's jaw works, heavily. Dorian strokes its steep, familiar curve, Bull's breaths gasping against his fingers in an unsteady tempo.

It is no great thing. A small unravelling, a brief flux into pleasure. Dorian feels his own need flare in response to the flashes of raw, ready want in Bull's face. The fingers of Bull's other hand splay against the small of his back. 

"Let me see you." The words are an effort with the way his breaths are edging over into moans. It is, Dorian understands with a twisting, exhilarating thrill, a double-edged plea: _Let me see you. Look at me._

When Bull opens his eye, dark with brimming need, Dorian meets his gaze, and does not shy away.

It is, in the end, all that it takes.

Afterwards, they lie drowsy and slow in the grass, Dorian with his back to a root and his arms wound around Bull's shoulders, Bull slanted back to lie between Dorian's raised knees. He is heavy, rather so, but any complaint over that barely skims Dorian's mind. Under the branches, tiny insects float in soundless clouds in sloping columns of light. The westering sun dyes the shadows in deepening shades of blue.

In another moment, they'll have to head back the outpost.

"We are probably past pretending," Dorian says, "that things are quite the same."

Bull grasps Dorian's left hand. There's a gentle tug, then the imprint of an open-mouthed kiss on his knuckles. A presumption, exactly like the way they linger wrapped into each other.

"You know me." Bull's reply has a hint of a drawl. In a way, it's reassuring, that return to his aplomb, though the look on his face when he spilled against Dorian in the end is drawn vivid in Dorian's mind. "I'll try anything once."

"Twice if you enjoy it?"

"Make that three times," Bull says, and Dorian's startled laugh drifts out into the sheltering trees.

"Very well," he says then, after a breath. "Though the southerners have a mildly ominous saying about the third time being the truth."

Bull shifts, but for comfort, not for movement. "I'll take that chance."


End file.
